Laurell Hamilton - Affliction

He smiled. ‘Everyone calls me that, and I’m taller than all of them.’

I smiled and made a vague motion at him, trying for noncommittal. I went out into the hallway with Nicky trailing behind. We walked a little way away from all the other police to have more privacy. ‘I’m back, Ted.’

‘I take it you cured Little Henry.’

‘Yeah, that’s a whole ’nother story, but it sounds like they took Callahan out before he could piece together that they were hitting his people. The vamp’s original body has to be in the sheriff’s territory, somewhere that the sheriff would have known about.’

‘Gutterman says that Al knows the area just about as well as the sheriff,’ Edward said.

‘Al left to take a phone call, but I can ask him about old mines, caves, anything with a rock wall and a dirt floor.’ I told Edward about the vision I’d had with Little Henry.

‘I called Al and told him to start making a list of places, but I’ll call him again and add your information so he can narrow it down.’

‘I love that you already had Al making a list.’

‘And you’re going to stay and see if Henry has any other information that will help us narrow the list down even further, aren’t you?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Hatfield and I are making teams to go search the area now. If you want to be in on it, don’t take too long questioning your new conquest.’

‘Oh, God, Ted, don’t say it that way, I worked really hard to not make him another conquest.’

‘Sorry, bad joke; question Henry fast and get over here. I’ll quote one of your favorite movies, “We’re burning daylight.”’

I grinned. ‘You’re one of the few people who knew I had a thing for John Wayne movies until very recently.’

‘That one shitty night in the hotel and a marathon on the Western channel makes it hard to forget,’ he said.

‘Hey, you liked them, too.’

‘True.’

‘And the next day when we said we hadn’t gotten much sleep, the other cops thought we’d had marathon sex,’ I said.

‘They wouldn’t believe the movie marathon,’ he said.

‘They never do.’

‘We’re going to be ready to start searching in about forty-five minutes. Will you be ready?’

‘Do my best, though I’m down a guard.’

‘What’d you do to this one?’

‘Nothing,’ I said, and let the offended tone sound.

‘Sure,’ he said.

‘I’ll explain when we’re out searching for vampires.’

‘I was going to divide you and me up on different teams so that we could trust that at least two of the groups know enough about vampires to look in every place a body could be.’

‘That makes sense, but I’ll miss having you at my back,’ I said.

‘Same here, but we really are burning daylight, and I don’t mean to go all movie line on you, but I have a bad feeling about tonight.’

‘How so?’

‘The Lover of Death is spooked now. He has nothing to lose by throwing everything at us.’

‘You worried about zombies?’ I asked.

‘Aren’t you?’

I thought about all the bodies we’d found in the house, like a creepy grocery store. Nicky had said you’d need a hell of a lot of zombies to store food like that. ‘Yeah, I’m worried about more zombies.’

‘Then question Little Henry, and I’ll have SWAT meet you at the hospital to drive out with you. Hatfield and I will take our teams and start searching our sections. SWAT will have the map with the locations marked. Let’s find the bastard before nightfall.’

‘Will do,’ I said. We hung up, and I went back to see if Little Henry remembered anything about a room with stone walls and a dirt floor.

Little Henry was already up and yelling for fresh clothes when we went back into the room. The hospital gown, which would have wrapped around me three times and tied twice, didn’t reach his knees, and gaped in the back badly. The view was a nice one, but I looked away, because he wasn’t mine to gape at. I’d worked too hard to not ardeur his ass to look at it now. Either Henry didn’t realize he was flashing us, or he didn’t care.

‘I need clothes!’

‘Mr Crawford, you didn’t have any when you came in,’ the small blond nurse told him, finally raising her voice back, just this side of yelling at him. She’d been the one he tossed across the room, though he probably didn’t remember it.

‘I’ve got an extra T-shirt in my tac bag that will fit you,’ Nicky said.

Henry turned, his long, long hair in a tangle around him. ‘Thank you.’

‘But your inseam isn’t going to fit in my extra pair of pants.’

I turned to the nurse, who was glaring at him. ‘Can you find some scrub pants that will fit him?’

‘I can try,’ she said, and stalked past him.

I touched her arm as she went past, and she turned the glare on me. ‘Thank you.’

‘For what?’ she asked.

‘Doing your job. Henry doesn’t remember throwing you across the room.’

Her eyes softened a little.

Henry said, ‘I did what?’

‘You fought the nice doctors and nurses when you were under vampire influence,’ I said.

He looked at the nurse, who was my size but not as muscular. ‘I am so sorry, did I hurt you? And I’m sorry I yelled just now.’

She shook her head. ‘Not really hurt, no, bruised. Apology accepted, and I’ll see about getting you some pants; we can’t have you leaving in just a shirt.’ She laughed at some inside joke.

‘They won’t have shoes either,’ I said.

‘What size do you wear?’ Nicky asked.

‘Twelve.’

‘You’re in luck; I got an extra pair in the car.’

‘I appreciate it.’

‘Not a problem,’ Nicky said.

‘You know, not to put too fine a point on it, but you’re a civilian and we’ll be riding with SWAT on this one.’

‘I know most of the cops in town, Marshal Blake. My dad and I were the ones who led them out on survival searches and helped them do wilderness training around here.’

I nodded. ‘Okay, but when they arrive, if you’re not ready to go, we can’t wait.’

‘I’ll be ready, but you can’t leave without me anyway.’

‘SWAT is bringing a map of our search grid.’

‘I saw the same image you saw, but I know the place where he’s holed up.’

‘You recognized it?’

‘I told them about it.’

‘Tell me and I’ll tell the others.’

‘You’ll never find it without me.’ His face grew very serious. ‘They were right to kill us; we’d find them anywhere in the mountains here.’

I wanted to correct him on his pronoun choice, but I didn’t think it had been accidental, and if it had been it was too big a Freudian slip for me to deal with, I’d leave it to the professionals when he started therapy for the fresh PTSD.

‘If you get the shirt and boots, he can at least be that much dressed,’ I said.

Nicky shook his head. ‘I’m your only bodyguard right now, so you have to come with me, or we take him down to the car in the scrubs they’re looking for.’

‘If I said I’ll be fine until you get back, you would say what?’

He just looked at me, that one blue eye giving me attitude, and since it was Nicky it was a lot of attitude. ‘That if this were a scary movie, I’d leave, and you’d be gone or dead when I come back, so we stay together.’

‘Because it would be the kiss of death in a horror flick?’ I asked.

‘Because I’m your bodyguard.’ He said it flat with no return of the humor I’d been trying for.

Henry said, ‘I heard you two talking about how the zombies needed so much food and where they’re going to get more.’

I looked at him. ‘Sorry, I didn’t think until too late that you might hear us the way people do when they’re coming out of anesthesia.’